BY MARIAM KIPAROIDZE, MARY CUNNINGHAM, REBECCA REDELMEIER, GRETCHEN SMAIL

For more than a month, the director of Kidz Life Childcare Ministry day care in Cumberland, Ind., doled out the sleep aid melatonin to more than a dozen preschool children at nap time — even though she did not have parents’ permission, prosecutors said.

Day care director Tonya Rachelle Voris allegedly gave out the gummies to kids from December 2022 to the end of January 2023 at the facility, which promises care “based on Christian principles,” from its home inside the New Life Church, according to prosecutors.

Voris’ boss, Pastor David Faulk, fired her and reported her to Cumberland police after the day care’s assistant director came forward to alert him about the issue, according to Faulk’s affidavit. Voris was arrested on six counts of reckless supervision of children and 11 counts of negligent care of children. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced in February 2024 to two years in jail with a year and a half of the sentence suspended, according to court records.

But authorities at the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, which oversees child care programs in the state, could not take action against the day care itself — because Indiana is one of more than 10 states that exempt religious facilities that offer child care from following typical requirements.

“The Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning has no authority on unlicensed registered ministries administering medication, vitamins or supplements per state law,” a spokesperson for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration told the NYCity News Service in response to questions about the Kidz Life Childcare Ministry case.

The spokesperson added that the agency could revoke an unlicensed day care facility’s registration only “if the owner was convicted of a crime or the Department of Child Services substantiated an abuse or neglect allegation against them, neither of which occurred in this case.”

Kidz Life and Voris’ lawyer, Christopher L. Isom, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Fifteen Kids, One Adult

A NYCity News Service analysis of day care legislation across the U.S. found a wide range of rules on day care safety — including on minimum caregiver-to-child ratios, required training and minimum age for staff or directors.

For example, caregivers in New York and North Dakota centers can’t supervise more than seven preschoolers at a time — the lowest ratio in the country.

But in Florida, Texas and other states, caregivers can watch up to 15 3-year-olds.

The NYCity News Service examined child care regulations for all 50 states and the District of Columbia using a national database maintained by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Reporters analyzed requirements ranging from staff-to-child ratios to training requirements — with a focus on caregivers for 3-year-olds, one of the more prevalent ages of those in day care.

Diane Schilder, who studies public policy and programs affecting children and families at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said staffing ratios have substantial consequences on the quality of education and safety.

“Some states, when it comes down to ratios, especially for infants and toddlers, the determination is, ‘You need to make sure that children can get out of the building safely if there’s a fire. So you can’t have more than three babies with one adult’,” Schilder said. “But other states interpret health and safety very differently.”

Caps also vary on the maximum size for a group or classroom of preschoolers. Mississippi limits the maximum group size at 14 children. But other states, including Georgia, allow up to 30 3-year-olds in a day care group, with one adult for every 15 kids, according to state regulations.

The federal government allows states to set these benchmarks. But the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommended limit, reiterated by the U.S. Department of Health, is no more than 14 3-year-olds in a day care group, with a minimum of one adult for every seven kids.

Linda K. Smith, Director of Early Childhood Initiative at Bipartisan Policy Center, a D.C.-based think tank, said day care centers with higher caregiver-to-children ratios are less safe.

“If you have too many children and not enough adults, it’s simply unsafe,” she said. “I think ratios and group sizes are there for reasons.”

States Consider Weaker Protections

Some states have been implementing or considering measures to increase staffing ratios or lower the minimum age of day care workers, contending deregulation would lower costs and make child care less expensive.

Smith said that is unlikely.

“A lot of people are under the impression that if you just change those things, it’s going to make it more affordable. Not going to happen,” she said. “For the most part, just changing the ratios a little bit doesn’t help with the affordability factor, but it does increase the accident rates and the safety issues.”

Regulations also vary on how young day care directors can be. In Arkansas, directors have to be at least 21, while in Minnesota, they can be 18.

Staffers can be even younger: In Florida, caregivers can be as young as 16, if supervised. North Dakota caregivers can be as young as 14, provided they have written parental consent to work there and the day care follows child labor rules.

While most day care oversight is left to the states, the federal government does require background checks for day care workers, and mandates that states publish inspection reports of licensed day care centers. The federal government also requires child care facilities that get federal dollars to mandate basic health and safety training for staff, including CPR.

But that has limits: Some states have different standards for child care facilities that are unlicensed due to religious exemptions.

The federal government also encourages states to publish quality ratings of day care centers. Oklahoma became the first state to adopt the rating system, starting in 1998. But Mississippi, for example, doesn’t use these guides, and other states including Missouri and Kansas are still developing their guides.

The Fight Over Regulation

Nonprofit advocacy groups such as Child Care Aware of America and National Association for the Education of Young Children have long noted how regulations and oversight vary widely across the U.S. Those groups have called for boosting standards nationwide — including licensing all day cares, conducting regular inspections and strengthening training standards.

But states across the country have been passing legislation and considering bills that would deregulate the child care industry, in what they call a bid to lower costs.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a 2022 bill increasing the staffing ratio for day care centers from one adult for every eight children to one for every 10 kids.

Kansas’ state legislature passed a 2023 bill that would have diluted qualification requirements to work at a day care, but Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the measure. Kansas has upheld some of the country’s most stringent child care policies since “Lexie’s Law” was introduced in 2010, in response to a series of high-profile deaths of young children in day care.

Montana passed a 2023 bill exempting small, in-home day care operators from licensing requirements as long as they don’t get government subsidies. The state also increased child care ratios to six 1-year-olds for every caregiver — up from four — and 10 2-year-olds per caregiver — up from eight. They also boosted the cap on kids per caregiver to 20 kids ages 6 and up — higher than the original cap of 14, and changed the maximum number of 6-year-olds in a group to 40 — up from 32.

Some Wisconsin lawmakers introduced a bill in 2023 to lower the minimum age of assistant child care teachers from 18 (with some exceptions for 17-year-olds) to 16. But the bill stalled out during the legislative session.

“A lot of state legislation to loosen licensing is framed as a way of addressing what is called red tape,” said Schilder at the Urban Institute. But Schilder said the increased sizes and lowered age limits could bring decreased quality of care.

“For a lot of parents, they don’t want to put their children in a setting if their child can’t have their diaper changed all day,” she said.

BY MARY CUNNINGHAM AND GRETCHEN SMAIL

Kelsey Soult took a job in 2016 at Dreamlife Community, a child care center in Cincinnati, because she had just been let go as a veterinarian assistant and needed money to support her family.

But the new position, according to Soult, turned into “the worst job I’ve ever had in my life.”

She alleged her boss, Edreisha Humphrey, threatened to withhold her pay if she needed to stay home with her sick children. Worse, she said, her boss failed to pay her for all of the hours she worked.

A U.S. Department of Labor civil lawsuit would later back that up, as officials alleged that Humphrey and Dreamlife Community had failed to pay Soult and 22 of her colleagues a total of more than $10,000 in back wages accrued between April 2016 and August 2017.

A federal court would later decide in favor of Soult and her colleagues in a default judgment. And the workers are far from alone.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, child care employees are among the workers most susceptible to wage theft in the nation. The “low wage, high violation” occupation all too often shortchanges early educators — most of whom are women of color, and many of whom are immigrants, experts say.

A NYCity News Service analysis of Department of Labor wage violation data from 2018 to 2023 found more than 3,000 instances of pay violations at day care centers across the country. Those centers owed more than $5.8 million in back wages to more than 13,000 workers in the day care industry alone.

Shortchanged on Pay

When Soult grew suspicious that Dreamlife was underpaying her, she started keeping a record of her hours on a scrap of paper — documenting her time in, time out and lunch breaks. Paycheck after paycheck confirmed her suspicions: “Every single paycheck was inaccurate,” she told the NYCity News Service.

That caused intense stress at home, where every paycheck mattered. “It was devastating,” she said. “We had four kids, all together. We had just had a baby.”

Her husband was still in college, and he picked up extra shifts as a nursing assistant at a nursing home. Soult said there were times she and her husband barely saw each other — and barely got any sleep.

“It was like, ‘Oh my God, how are we going to feed our kids?’” Soult said.

In 2018, the Department of Labor filed a civil lawsuit in federal court accusing Dreamlife of repeatedly violating the Fair Labor and Standards Act.

The Labor Department accused Humphrey of paying workers less than the Ohio minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, not paying employees their final paychecks when they left the company, not paying time-and-a-half for overtime, shaving time off the total hours worked and not keeping adequate payroll records.

Dreamlife and Humphrey did not respond in court to the complaint, according to legal documents. In February 2019, a federal judge decided in favor of the employees, ordering Dreamlife Community to pay the more than $10,000 in back wages plus another $10,000 in additional damages to Soult and her 22 colleagues.

Humprey and Dreamlife could not be reached for comment.

Lack of Oversight

The Labor Department defines what happened to Soult and the other Dreamlife employees as “wage theft,” a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Wage theft can include when companies or bosses pay workers below the minimum wage, refuse to pay for overtime or steal tips.

Lack of oversight is one reason employers steal wages, according to Celine McNicholas, director of policy and government affairs and general counsel at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank focused on the economic needs of low- and middle-income workers.

“You can get away with it because there are so few really effective enforcement mechanisms for workers,” she said.

Enforcement has eroded, according to an Economic Policy Institute study. In 1979, there were 81,717 workers for every Labor Department investigator checking whether wages were paid fairly. By 2019, there were 189,878 workers for every investigator.

Less funding for enforcing wage laws is an issue both at the state and federal level, according to McNicholas. She said the Labor Department is “absolutely underfunded” and “should have substantially more resources to do their job.”

PHOTO/Tanaphong Toochinda

Cases Drag On for Years

In 2005, a Labor Department inspector investigated Endless Possibilities, a day care in Kansas City, Mo., and found the company was not paying its caregivers overtime. The owner, Wolfgang Shields, agreed to pay back wages, according to court documents.

In 2008, a different Labor Department inspector went back and again found violations at Endless Possibilities, which was run by Shields and one of Shields’ companies, Contingent Care LLC. Again, Shields promised to pay back wages, court documents show.

In 2010, a third Labor Department inspector, Deann Alvarado, returned to Endless Possibilities. She examined payroll records, timecards and other company documents and found extensive violations not only for overtime compensation, but for not paying minimum wage, poor recordkeeping and late payments to employees.

In all, workers had been shortchanged out of more than $92,000, officials said.

The Department of Labor took Endless Possibilities, Contingent Care and Shields to court in 2011. Shields and his companies argued that since the employees worked at a preschool, the workers were teachers, and should be exempt from getting overtime pay. The federal District Court rejected that argument in 2014 and ordered Shields and the companies to repay the more than $92,000 to the workers.

Endless Possibilities, Contingent Care and Shields appealed the ruling. A three-judge federal appeals court panel rejected their claim and sided with the Labor Department. That final decision was handed down in 2016 — more than a decade after inspectors first discovered problems at Endless Possibilities in Kansas City.

In addition to the federal Labor Department taking legal action on their behalf, workers often also sue for back wages independently, a review of federal court filings showed.

Alicia Slater filed a federal civil complaint in 2020 against Yum Yum’s 123 ABC in Philadelphia, alleging it did not pay her $2,436 in overtime wages for her work over almost a year and a half with the company.

The day care operation did not respond to the lawsuit, according to court documents.

A federal judge ruled on Slater’s behalf in 2021, ordering Yum Yum’s to pay more than $11,000 to cover back wages, attorney fees and court costs.

Some States Step In

State labor departments can also take action for unpaid wages.

The New York State Department of Labor began investigating the St. Mary-St. Joseph Early Learning Center — located at the Church of the Saints Mary of the Snow, St. Joseph and St. John in Saugerties, N.Y. — after workers complained about unpaid wages, officials confirmed.

The center, which abruptly closed its doors in August 2023, left 150 children without care and one worker alleging the operators withheld thousands of dollars in back pay. The facility also had four inspection violations dating to July 2021, including isolating a child in a dark or unsupervised area, according to the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, which inspects day care centers.

One former employee, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears a backlash for speaking out, told the NYCity News Service that she worked more than 10 hours a day from November 2022 through June 2023 and was never compensated for overtime. She estimated the day care owes her about $4,000 in back wages.

The issues prompted the former employee and her colleagues to leave, she said.

“We didn’t find them trustworthy to work for,” she said, “For them to have no care in the world about any of us, but then can go to church on Sunday like they didn’t just put over 150 kids out of a day care and us employees with no jobs is insane to me.”

Jackie Bernier, whose son attended the child care center for a year and a half before it closed, said she tried calling the school for answers but never heard back. She said the only communication families received was a post on the church’s Facebook page, saying the day care was unable to open because it did not have “the necessary staff.”

“Why are we paying you for not paying the teachers?” Bernier remembered thinking when she read the post. “They need to be paid for what they’re doing.”

Kara Burke, a spokesperson for the state Department of Labor, told the NYCity News Service: “We are currently investigating St. Mary’s St. Joseph’s Learning Center but cannot provide an update as the investigation is still active.” The agency declined further comment.

The Church of the Saints Mary of the Snow, St. Joseph and St. John did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

‘Grim Financial Bind’

In addition to wage theft, child care workers often face chronically low wages.

The median national hourly wage for child care workers is $13.71, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Broken down by state, pay varies widely: Data from 2022 shows childcare workers in New York typically make $16.36 hourly while workers in Mississippi earn $9.83.

The day care industry has been slow to rebound from the pandemic, with pay lagging behind other industries like retail and food and beverage servers, according to the National Women’s Law Center.

Decades of extremely low payment levels has led to a “grim financial bind” for many child care workers, according to a 2020 study by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. Researchers surveyed nearly 8,000 child care staffers in California in 2020 and found that virtually all early educators were women, the vast majority were women of color, and many of them were immigrants.

Around one-third said they survived off at least one form of public assistance, like Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid health care program, and SNAP, the federal government’s food assistance program. Many said that if they suddenly faced an unexpected $400 expense, they did not have the money on hand to cover it, the study found.

The poverty rate among day care workers is almost eight times higher than rates for primary and middle school teachers. The center’s report called day care work a “pathway to poverty.” As a result of the low pay, they found, caregivers leave the field — a constant turnover that adds to instability in the industry.

Economist Elise Gould from the Economic Policy Institute said some child care centers are struggling so much financially that they cannot afford to pay their workers more.

“For many places, they’re not running with huge margins,” she said. “And labor is certainly their biggest expense.”

Fear of Retaliation

Tobi Adejumo, a researcher for the Center for Study of Child Care Employment, said many people working in child care do not want to risk unemployment by pushing for better pay or benefits.

“Sometimes they’re desperate,” she said. “They’re desperate enough to say, ‘I will take anything at this moment, just to have a job and to have a paycheck. The other things I’m not even thinking about because I just need a job.’”

In the few states where child care workers have unionized, employees generally have better protections, Adejumo said.

She added that lack of unionization is usually a result of “how much people are informed about unions and what the effects or the advantages of that can be as a workforce as a whole in [pushing] for good working conditions.”

Soult, the former Dreamlife employee in Cincinnati, is one of many workers who left the child care profession. In 2017, she returned to being a veterinarian assistant. She is now a stay-at-home mother to her four children.

Soult said she never got her final paycheck or W-2 federal wage payment documents from Dreamlife, nor did she receive the $130.58 in back wages and damages the court ordered her to be repaid.

The back wages may not sound like much, but for a family with little income, every dollar mattered, she said. Recovering her wages was a battle she was too tired to keep fighting.

“By the time that I was done working there, I was like, ‘I just don’t want anything to do with this anymore’,” she said. “I’m just gonna take my losses and move on.”

PHOTO/Danielle Cerullo

BY JEAN BRANNUM

Toddlers ignored, despite shouting for help as they’re beaten by older children. Young children sexually assaulted after being left unattended. Adults responsible for youngsters being arrested for child pornography.

These are some of the nightmarish accounts of alleged incidents at child care facilities located inside fitness centers across the country, according to court documents reviewed by NYCity News Service.

While fitness centers advertise child care as a convenience to attract parents of children as young as 3 months old, many gyms don’t have to follow the same regulations as typical child care facilities.

For example, in states such as Arkansas, day care facilities that watch children for a few hours do not need licensing. Other states, including Maryland, exempt a child care operation from licensing if a parent remains on the premises.

“Even though they’re not held to the same regulations as standard day cares, gym day cares are still responsible for keeping your child safe,” said Russell Button, a Dallas attorney who has sued gyms for injuries to children.

Troubling Incidents

One 2020 incident at an EōS Fitness gym in Palm Springs, Calif., unfolded when a 5-year-old girl was dropped off at the gym’s Fun House-Kids Club while her mother went to exercise, according to court filings.

The girl was left unattended in a room for more than 30 minutes, with a 12-year-old boy who had also been dropped off in the child care, according to a lawsuit filed by the girl’s family. The boy allegedly sexually assaulted the girl for a half hour and forced her to perform sexual acts on him, according to the complaint.

The Palm Springs family sued EōS Fitness for negligence, including violations of the company’s own rules that at least two employees are needed in its day care centers.

A second attendant was supposed to be on duty the day of the incident, but had been fired, according to Spencer Lucas, an attorney who represented the family. The family’s names were kept anonymous in court records to protect their identity.

The gym initially denied wrongdoing. It later admitted that in addition to the boy’s actions, the gym’s own negligence was “a substantial factor in causing harm” to the girl. A local jury voted to award $13 million in damages to the girl.

After the gym sought a new trial, the case was settled out of court in June 2022 for an undisclosed sum, Lucas told the NYCity News Service.

The 12-year-old boy, whose name was withheld by the court due to his age, was arrested and tried as a juvenile offender, according to Lucas. The outcome of his case was confidential because the offender was underage.

Fun House-Kids Club was not licensed, according to the California Department of Social Services.

‘Crying Out in Distress’

The case is far from the only incident of abuse alleged at a gym’s day care facility.

Paul and Carol Butera went to work out on June 26, 2022, at a Life Time Fitness gym in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas. They dropped off their 2-year-old and 4-year-old sons at the gym’s day care center before exercising, according to a lawsuit filed by the family.

The two brothers were playing in different areas of the day care. The older boy allegedly came running when he heard his little brother “crying out in distress.” The 4-year-old found the toddler stripped naked with an older child allegedly hitting and punching him in the genitals, according to the family’s lawsuit.

“Not a single staff member responded to [the toddler’s] cries for help,” the complaint read, adding that the older brother got caregivers to finally intervene.

Day care attendants then got the parents, who could hear the toddler’s screams from the hallway, according to the lawsuit. After inspecting his injuries, the parents called the police.

The parents asked to see surveillance video, but the gym refused, according to the lawsuit. The parents allegedly did not learn the full details of the assault until the Frisco Police Department arrived, watched the surveillance video and told them what happened, according to court documents.

The parents sued Life Time for negligence, seeking an unspecified amount in damages.

In court, Life Time denied the allegations — only acknowledging that the parents did go to the gym that day. It countered that when the couple became members of the gym, they signed waivers assuming responsibility for injuries and damages they might face.

Life Time declined to comment for this story.

Lawyers for the Butera family also declined to comment for this story. But their attorney, Russell Button, said in a short video presentation on these kinds of cases, “Gym day cares operate a little differently than standard day care. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re off the hook and allowed to endanger kids and get away with it.”

The Buteras’ civil case began in state court and was moved in August 2023 to a federal district court. A jury trial in the case is set for January 2025.

Denial of Responsibility

At another Life Time gym, located in South Jordan, Utah, outside of Salt Lake City, a mother checked her 3-year-old daughter into the gym’s child care center while she went to exercise in August 2014, according to court documents.

An hour and a half later, she headed back to get her child, but caregivers allegedly could not find the girl. The mother allegedly “found her alone in the boys’ bathroom with her shorts and underwear on the floor at her feet and her shirt twisted up around her neck,” according to a judge’s summary of the case.

The girl allegedly told her mother that she had been sexually assaulted by “the boys.” A counselor later determined the girl was suffering from PTSD and depression due to the incident, which the gym challenged, according to the judge’s case summary.

The family sued Life Time in 2015 in state court, claiming negligence.

Life Time rejected claims about events of that day and disputed evaluations of the child by expert witnesses, according to a judge’s case summary. The gym also argued that it bore no responsibility for what happened inside the day care because of its legal waiver, which members sign upon joining, according to its court filing.

The gym and the family reached an undisclosed agreement in 2021 that ended the case before it went to jury trial, according to an attorney representing the family.

The attorney said details about the settlement are confidential, and declined further comment.

Life Time declined to comment on the case.

PHOTO/Chris Hardy

Parents’ Nightmare

In late July 2023, local police and federal investigators arrested a child care worker at a Youfit Gyms location just outside of New Orleans, as part of the Department of Justice’s nationwide crackdown on people possessing child sexual exploitation and abuse materials.

Max Cory Johnson Jr. told investigators he ran the gym’s day care center, and admitted downloading images of child sexual abuse onto his personal laptop, including explicit photos with titles that included the name “JulyJailbait.jpg,” according to the criminal complaint. Investigators said they found at least 173 such files stored in the laptop.

Johnson, who pleaded guilty on Feb. 8, 2024, had worked roughly five days a week at the gym in Harvey, La., since December 2022. He was responsible for supervising children between the ages of 3 and 10, according to court records. He faces up to 20 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines, officials said.

Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, sent out an alert asking anyone who might have information about possible victims in the case to contact them.

”Due to his online activity and employment, authorities with the two agencies are seeking information that may help identify potential victims Johnson may have engaged or exploited,” Homeland Security Investigations wrote in its press release.

Youfit Gyms declined to comment.

Evaluating Safety

Alison Hooper, an early childhood education professor at the University of Alabama, said there are steps parents can take to evaluate the risks of day care facilities, including those in a gym.

“It’s important for families to know whether the program they’re sending their child to is licensed or not,” Hooper said. “If it’s not licensed then they might not be meeting things like ratios and group sizes.”

For example, Hooper said that in Alabama, there needs to be one adult supervisor for every five infants.

For parents concerned about placing their children at a fitness facility’s day care center, Hooper listed several factors to check.

“The things I look for are things like safety hazards and cleanliness. What are the adults doing? Are they paying attention to the children?,” Hoope said. “Are they talking to the children? Or are they on their phones? Are kids able to play and explore? Are there toys for them to play with? Also, watch out for things like a lot of screen time.”

She added that if you are not allowed to see the day care before dropping off your kids, that is a “red flag.”